Plate Filter.

[dicko]

In theory my unit works quit well on small batches but it was a PITA with a 50 litre batch and the cost of the pads were rediculous.
I would like to compare the pads as it appears the pads in your unit look to be the same as mine.

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers

Doh!!

Misread your post.
Those pads are a lot bigger than mine 250mm sq : 150mm sq.
Now I am really interested how the unit goes.

Cheers

 

[BottleBitch]

these units are great for filtering wine not so great for beer, impossible to sanitize and massive DO pick up from the pads, which as I said is fine for wine where they don't need to worry about these two things, but for beer these are to of the most critical control points in the brewing process.


interesting ha, paying $600 plus to possibly infect and introduce a massive amount of oxygen to your brigt beer, I bet the people that sold you this unit didn't tell you this.

 

[Ross]

Doh!!

Misread your post.
Those pads are a lot bigger than mine 250mm sq : 150mm sq.
Now I am really interested how the unit goes.

Cheers

Dicko,

I used to use a Ferrari double pad plate filter & you had to run a lot of water through them to clear the taste of paoer - Is this the same with these pads? I'm assuming it is, as they appear to be a similar pad. If it is the case, you certainly want to be running water through them first, rather than beer.

cheers Ross

 

[domonsura]

Doh!!

Misread your post.
Those pads are a lot bigger than mine 250mm sq : 150mm sq.
Now I am really interested how the unit goes.

Cheers

I just measured them Dicko, they're actually 200mm square, not 250 as I guessed before. I think I can get hold of bigger ones that you could probably get 4 x 150 by 150 pads out of, I'll find out the price for you. Thanks for the heads-up re:using beer to prime the pads, I had thought that it would make sense to use a weak sanitiser solution, but wasn't sure - I think I will, then allow a little bit to run out as per the instructions you have posted. I don't like the idea of running the beer through unsanitised equipment at all.

Enoch - followed your lead & just been to the hardware store and got camping mat, and insulated the inside of both doors. Now a pretty blue colour!

Hosing purchased for the filter now (the only thing I forgot, even though I was buying 3/4 hosing at the same - dunno how I forgot), kegs are ready, and I should have some results shortly! (Hopefully good ones )

 

[domonsura]

these units are great for filtering wine not so great for beer, impossible to sanitize and massive DO pick up from the pads, which as I said is fine for wine where they don't need to worry about these two things, but for beer these are to of the most critical control points in the brewing process.
interesting ha, paying $600 plus to possibly infect and introduce a massive amount of oxygen to your brigt beer, I bet the people that sold you this unit didn't tell you this.

And so the commercial breweries filter how? And impossible to sanitise? No more impossible than any other piece of equipment surely?.......................every commercial/micro brewery I have visited that filters uses a plate filter, unless the giant plate filters that I've seen on-site are $5K to 10K paperweights.............

 

[Ross]

And so the commercial breweries filter how?.......................every commercial/micro brewery I have visited that filters uses a plate filter, unless the giant plate filters that I've seen on-site are $5K to 10K paperweights.............

Not sure they use paper filters Dom (but maybe they do) - The commercial ones I've seen can be backflushed & sterilised many times over.
Hope it does work out for you mate...it certainly looks great :icon_cheers:


cheers Ross

 

[BottleBitch]

And so the commercial breweries filter how? And impossible to sanitise? No more impossible than any other piece of equipment surely?.......................every commercial/micro brewery I have visited that filters uses a plate filter, unless the giant plate filters that I've seen on-site are $5K to 10K paperweights.............

The most common method of filtration is diatomaceous earth (DE) with is the filter media applied to different types of stainless steel filters plates, most common configuration is horizontal or vertical leaf filters, also candle type filters plates are fairly common, but bigger breweries are starting to move away from these style of filters because the filter media DE is highly carcinogenic and moving to cross flow filtration technology. all these types of filtration are able to be cleaned with hot caustic and sanitized with hot liquor prior to operation, then cooled with deairated sterile cold liquor. I personally like the horizontal left filters because you can blow down the filters with CO2 after chilling with sterile cold liquor to minimize the liquor to beer interface, which means you bleed less beer down the drain waiting for the DO to come into spec.

I seen these paperweights that you talk of and they do get dusty sitting in the corner, thinking of selling our one for scrape metal, recon that it has to have a few grand in stainless steel in it.

Hope this answers your questions

 

[domonsura]

I wasn't really asking questions of you Herbstoffe. It's quite clear that you are talking about a whole other ball game, involving many thousands of $$$ worth of equipment, and as such, quite out of context when compared to a humble little $600 / 6 plate filter like this one. It's like comparing a formula 1 car to a morris minor. Of course they do a better job, and you'd want it too!

You are right about potential DO pickup from the pads, and the waste involved, but like everything else, sanitisation included, I will live with the compromises I have to make due to the scale and cost constraints of what I am doing. I'm happy with running a bit of sanitiser though it, just like the rest of my equipment gets. And I'm happy with losing a little beer to make it all a little brighter, and if the DO is a problem I'm sure I'll find a way around that too. You have given me an idea though about pressurising the filter with CO2 prior to use to expel oxygen....- I might have to have a play with that if DO becomes an issue.
I might even find a way around the pads not being re-useable as well, you never know, I happen to have some rather special 1 micron filter fabric on the table as I type. Washable pads maybe....

But thanks for the info re: the methods being used these days in commercial breweries. Glad to hear they are moving away from using stuff that might poison us

 

[domonsura]

Not sure they use paper filters Dom (but maybe they do) - The commercial ones I've seen can be backflushed & sterilised many times over.
Hope it does work out for you mate...it certainly looks great :icon_cheers:
cheers Ross

Nah mate, I didn't mean they used paper filters, apologies if it came across that way. The pads I've seen (briefly) could be flushed & sterilised as well I believe. I wasn't quite sure what they were made of though. Probably out of my price range whatever it was.......

 

[BottleBitch]

I wasn't really asking questions of you Herbstoffe. It's quite clear that you are talking about a whole other ball game, involving many thousands of $$$ worth of equipment, and as such, quite out of context when compared to a humble little $600 / 6 plate filter like this one. It's like comparing a formula 1 car to a morris minor. Of course they do a better job, and you'd want it too!

You are right about potential DO pickup from the pads, and the waste involved, but like everything else, sanitisation included, I will live with the compromises I have to make due to the scale and cost constraints of what I am doing. I'm happy with running a bit of sanitiser though it, just like the rest of my equipment gets. And I'm happy with losing a little beer to make it all a little brighter, and if the DO is a problem I'm sure I'll find a way around that too. You have given me an idea though about pressurising the filter with CO2 prior to use to expel oxygen....- I might have to have a play with that if DO becomes an issue.
I might even find a way around the pads not being re-useable as well, you never know, I happen to have some rather special 1 micron filter fabric on the table as I type. Washable pads maybe....

But thanks for the info re: the methods being used these days in commercial breweries. Glad to hear they are moving away from using stuff that might poison us

I would not use sanitizer if possible in a plate and frame filter, tends to bind to the filter pads and taint the beer, also it never really gets into all the nooks and crannies of those things, if the plastic and or the filter papers can handle heat, sanitize the filter with hot liquor 80 degrees plus for at least 20 mins recirculating it using product pump on the filter, and you can always make you own sterile deairated cold liquor, by boiling liquor for 20 mins then putting it in to a sanitized keg and chilling this liquor down with positive CO2 pressure on the keg, once chilled carbonate it and use this to chill the filter down, then purge with CO2 that should reduce your wastage by half and drastically reduce your DO in your bright beer.

Cheers

P.s. DE is only carcinogenic if inhaled, so no need to worry about it because it stays in the filter housing not in the beer, we all where very very big gas masks and use dust reduction systems.

 

[alexbrand]

If I am informed quite right, the filter domonsura presented here, can also be flushed back with its own pump? The pump should work in both directions and have a change over switch. This is what I get from the german-language homepage. Not exactly for this filter pump but for all the other pumps there...

Alex

 

[MHB]

I have a small "Laboratory" (came from a food research lab) model; it only takes 2 circular plates about 125mm in diameter.

I can buy different grades of paper from coarse to sterile. The paper is made from cellulose pulp and DE (Diatomatious Earth)

I have it set up with a couple of Corney (Black) disconnects and just use CO2 to push the beer from 1 keg to the other.

The procedure I use goes like this:-

Boil about 2 L of water; to de-air
Add the boiling water to a Corney keg
Flush through the filter - stop before you run out of water.
Allow to cool overnight, full of water
Connect to the keg full of beer to be filtered and to a waste keg
Pressurise until the beer starts to flow out of the filter - you can see the colour in the lines - I let a couple of hundred mills go to waste
Connect to the destination keg and pressure transfer with the PRV lifted.

Frankly I think its a lot of farting around to achieve something that with a little patience you can get naturally.
Filtration is not a substitute for maturation; I like my beer with some age on it and believe there are benefits to having live yeast in the beer while it matures.

True filtration, rather than the sieving most people think of as filtration will remove chill haze, yeast and bacteria, its handy to be able to - but I dont want to unless I've got a real problem beer.

MHB

 

[domonsura]

Well here's the money shots.

BEFORE

AFTER

Didn't all go perfect, It was a little slower than I'd hoped but overall I'm happy with the result. I have a couple of very small criticisms of it, but they're minor -

• I had to crank the plates up tighter than I expected to get effective seals
• The directions regarding fitting seals/o-rings/filter pads were a little obtuse. I had to do a little more guessing than I like to do when I've spent this much.
• the motor has this high pitched whine that makes concentrating on my beer more difficult.

But as I said, overall I'm happy

 

[Jye]

So how did it end up taking to filter and how was it to clean and sanitise?

 

[domonsura]

I just got some warm sanitiser and circulated that through and waited for 10 minutes, then just ran the beer on through straight from the fermenter in the fridge. Allowed it to flush through until beer coloured and cold, and straight into the keg
About 30 minutes to filter 55 litres, lost about 300ml leakage from the filter assembly into the little collector dish during the process. Overall including what was left in the hosing I reckon I lost around 2 - 2.5 litres.
Cleaning was really simple & easy, undo clamps, discard pads, take out pad holders and rinse off in bucket of sanitiser. backwash the pump etc and all done & packed away. Took 5 minutes.

 

[Back Yard Brewer]

You are right about potential DO pickup from the pads,

I would not be to concerned about the DO pick up. Once you have it carbonated you should not have any problems. But that being said you could always make up a little drop sparger connect some Co2 and put it in the finished product for a short time to dispell some of the oxygen, or as you are filtering put in an inline sparger post filtration. This beer making process just gets more technical


BYB

 

[dicko]

I just measured them Dicko, they're actually 200mm square, not 250 as I guessed before. I think I can get hold of bigger ones that you could probably get 4 x 150 by 150 pads out of, I'll find out the price for you. Thanks for the heads-up re:using beer to prime the pads, I had thought that it would make sense to use a weak sanitiser solution, but wasn't sure - I think I will, then allow a little bit to run out as per the instructions you have posted. I don't like the idea of running the beer through unsanitised equipment at all.

Hi Dom,
I would be interested to know if you can get those filter papers
I have read your post on the finished product and the results seem good.
I had similar results with pretty much the same little problems like having to tighten the filter plates to prevent leaks etc.
If I could get a cheap sourse of filter pads I would be happy to use mine again as my results were excellent apart from not being able to filter 50 litres as the info on the web page and the instructions suggests.
I can now fix any chill haze problems with polyclar.

Ross,
I never detected any paper taste in any of the beer that I have filtered with this unit.

Cheers

 

[Ross]

Ross,
I never detected any paper taste in any of the beer that I have filtered with this unit.

Cheers

Have you tasted the water when you first run it? Mine was liquid paper for quite a while. The instructions said to run it until the paper taste dissappeared, which I used to do. Was just concerned if it was going to be soaked in beer straight away & hence no opportunity to run before kegging. Maybe yours are a better quality pad (but mine were $5 a pair). Give the water a taste first Dom to be safe...


Cheers Ross

 

[domonsura]

Alright...it's time to come clean. The plate filter didn't turn out to be ideal, because of the rigmarole involved with getting the papery taste or 'paddiness' out of the filters. I followed the directions to a tee, and when I queried elements of the results with the supplier of the filter, all of a sudden there was a whole lot of other stuff I should be doing, including flushing with sodium met, citric acid blah blah blah. So I said - nope. Not doing that to MY beer. Sorry. NO way. Money back please Simple. And I wasn't really thrilled about the amount of water I ended up being advised I'd need to put through it in the end.

So I bought one of Ross's. And it works great! Gravity feed, no problems, nice clean beer no dramas, no chemicals or ridiculous water flushes.

$500 cheaper

So to those of you who said 'paper taste'.....thanks for telling me even if I didn't listen <_<

And those of you who were looking at getting one - don't.

 

[Back Yard Brewer]

Alright...it's time to come clean. The plate filter didn't turn out to be ideal, because of the rigmarole involved with getting the papery taste or 'paddiness' out of the filters. I followed the directions to a tee, and when I queried elements of the results with the supplier of the filter, all of a sudden there was a whole lot of other stuff I should be doing, including flushing with sodium met, citric acid blah blah blah. So I said - nope. Not doing that to MY beer. Sorry. NO way. Money back please Simple. And I wasn't really thrilled about the amount of water I ended up being advised I'd need to put through it in the end.

So I bought one of Ross's. And it works great! Gravity feed, no problems, nice clean beer no dramas, no chemicals or ridiculous water flushes.

$500 cheaper

So to those of you who said 'paper taste'.....thanks for telling me even if I didn't listen <_<

And those of you who were looking at getting one - don't.

Makes you feel like a guinea pig for the rest of the forum <_< But thats what the forum is all about Seriously though company's will do what ever they can just to get a sale.

BYB